Autumn Selections: 2 Great Books & 1 Great Opera

Several days ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed on National Public Radio by Washington DC host Michel Martin. In our conversation, we talked about politics, the literary world and a great deal about American history. As many of you may have heard, I promised to suggest unique topics that I thought would be of interest to NPR listeners who had a similar fascination with politics and history.

For those of you who are reading this today, and who are in search of books or theater works that will inspire and inform you on the American experience, I can recommend two wonderful new books and one great new opera.

The first book is Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (Knopf), which is written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Kluger. With great detail, Kluger takes the history buff or novice through a timeline that explains how the United States acquired all 3.5 million square miles of its land. From the Louisiana Purchase negotiations with the French to the purchase of the Oregon territory from the British, Kluger lays out how each of our 50 states became a part of our great nation. I have written a much more lengthy review of this phenomenal work in an upcoming issue of the Princeton University alumni magazine, Princeton Alumni Weekly, but I urge you to make this book a part of your Fall reading list if you want a great lesson in both geography and American history spanning the last 200 years.

The second book that you should consider for your Fall list is Jeffrey Toobin's new book about the Supreme Court, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (Doubleday). Many of you probably enjoyed his book about the 2000 Presidential election and the court case that challenged its results, but I have been reading his work since the early 90s when he published a book about the controversial Oliver North, and then the trial of O.J. Simpson. Toobin's work appears regularly in The New Yorker. His newest book gives some interesting background on the current members of our nation's highest court, and I was most intrigued by what he says about the final months of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's service on the Court.

My final recommendation is not a book, but an opera. It may seem like an unusual medium to select when attempting to reveal a moment in American history---especially since most of our popular operas are set in Europe. But the opera, Margaret Garner, staged by the New York City Opera, and written by Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison and musician Richard Danielpour, recalls the history of slavery and race relations in the American South. Just as Morrison accomplished in her previous great works like "Song of Solomon" and "The Bluest Eye", she uses the character of Margaret Garner to demonstrate that even the least powerful individuals can find the strength to take a moral stand against the wrongs in society.

These two books and this great opera will make your Autumn quite a memorable one. Each of these works should introduce you to an important page of our nation's great history.

My Tour Through Washington, Charlotte, Birmingham

During the last several weeks, I have not had a chance to post an entry, but I have kept my promise to answer many of the individual emails that you have sent while I have been on the media tour to publicize the paperback edition of my book, The Senator and The Socialite. Those of you who welcomed me at Karibu Books in Washington DC, at Books a Million in Birmingham Alabama and at Joseph-Beth Bookstore in Charlotte, North Carolina were kind to attend my presentations and join the discussion about the issues of race, gender and class in American politics.

The Birmingham Times story ran last week and the Charlotte Observer ran this week. The Charlotte Post story will run next week. Many of you who attended the appearances will see that the various newspaper photogaphers were kind enough to run many photos of you along with the stories.

I also want to thank several of you for noting the article in Jet Magazine about my wife, Pamela Thomas-Graham, and sending us extra copies. Women's Wear Daily mentioned her in their #7 ranking of the WWD top 100 brands and labels. I am proud of her hard work.

When my book tour is completed at the end of the month, I will resume a regular schedule and return to posting the entries that focus more on current day politics and social issues. In the interim, I hope you will continue to tune in when I visit your city. For those in the New York City and Westchester area, please watch my political TV commentary with Michael Edelman as we appear with hosts Janine Rose and Brian Conybeare on News 12's "Newsmakers". This weekend, we are looking at local races and also speaking about how Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani are shaping up---and what it would mean if New York mayor Mike Bloomberg enters the race. A new Wall Street Journal-NBC TV poll suggests that while Clinton is ahead of Guiliani by 4 or 5 points, if Bloomberg entered the race, he would take some of the former mayor's supporters, and give Clinton an even greater lead.

Until we speak again... I look forward to seeing those who are welcoming me during my upcoming visit to Chicago and Detroit.

Paperback launch for "Senator and The Socialite"

After reading about me and my 6-year book project in the pages of The Washington Post, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Ebony and Reader's Digest, some of you have emailed me regarding my upcoming political biography.

Next month, I will be traveling on a 10-city publicity tour for the paperback launch of my book, The Senator and The Socialite, which is a biography of Senator Blanche Bruce, the first black to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate. This book is timely as the nation watches Senator Barack Obama's race to become the first black President. Whether the victor is my Chappaqua neighbor Senator Hillary Clinton, or Senator Obama or one of the other candidates, many Americans are fascinated by the rise of the African American politician in national politics. My new book explores that history by beginning with the incredible story of Blanche Bruce, who was born a slave and then became a wealthy Mississippi landowner before finally being elected to the U.S. Senate.


During the next few days, my publisher HarperCollins will begin to post my TV, radio, print and in-store appearances. I will list them here early next month because I hope that you will tune in, buy the book, or come meet me as I appear in book stores in various cities.

Whomever you are supporting in the 2008 Presidential race, I hope that "The Senator and The Socialite" will further illustrate the way in which race, politics and class intersect in national politics both today and in the past.

30th Anniversary of Alex Haley's "Roots"

This week, Reader's Digest and Warner Brothers Video are launching the 30th Anniversary celebration of Alex Haley's historic "Roots" book and TV miniseries. This Pulitzer-Prize winning book was an international bestseller and was transformed into the highest-rated TV movie in U.S. history when it appeared in 1977. I was flattered when Reader's Digest asked me to write the introduction to a special collection of Alex Haley's works, "Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America's Roots", which is being published this week. Few people realize that the Digest had financed Haley's 10 year search to find his family roots in Africa, but Haley had been a longtime contributing editor to Reader's Digest when he asked DeWitt and Lila Wallace (the founders of the Digest)to underwrite the research for his landmark book, "Roots". When the world read the book and learned of his ancestors, Kunte Kinte and Kizzy, and so many others, they all wanted to better understand their own family histories.

When the younger generation of readers and viewers buy the book and watch the film--and see actors LeVar Burton, Ben Vereen, Ed Asner, Leslie Uggams and others breathe life into Haley's family history, they will also understand why "Roots" helped to introduce people of all races to the issues surrounding the American South and how blacks and whites interacted through several generations. I hope you will get the reissue of "Roots" as well as the new Alex Haley collection. Reader's Digest has arranged that a percentage of each copy sold of "Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America's Roots", will be donated to the United Negro College Fund, to aid scholarship opportunities for needy students.

This week, I will be appearing on several programs to discuss "Roots" and the Alex Haley legacy. Among the programs will be "Night Talk with Mike Schneider" on Bloomberg Television (airing at 8pm and 10pm- check local listings), and the nationally syndicated radio program, "The Bev Smith Show" which airs in New York, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit and 20 other cities (airing live at 7pm Eastern - check local listings).

And of course I hope my New York friends will watch me and Michael Edelman as we continue to discuss local, state and national politics with hosts Janine Rose and Brian Conybeare on "Newsmakers" on News 12 on both Saturday and Sunday.

Violence, Children and the Virginia Tech Tragedy

We are all shaken by the tragedy that took place on the campus of Virginia Tech a few days ago. With 32 innocent people--most of them young students--murdered for no reason, many of us are asking why 23 year old college senior, Cho Seung-Hui, suddenly exploded in this rage. There are many people asking why he wasn't identified as an at-risk individual earlier.

From outside the country, we hear many commentators noting the violent nature of American culture. Many European and Asian countries are amazed at the ease by which American citizens are able to gain access to guns, knives and assault weapons. The power of the NRA lobby has made sensible gun control a difficult measure to implement. Many of us agree that hunters should be permitted to hunt with rifles, but the gun advocates push the envelope by insisting that there be NO limits on their rights to bear arms. Their argument: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people". While the latter sentence is true, the prior one is not, and an onlooker does not have to be a forensics expert to note that if gun laws were more strict, Cho Seung-Hui would not have been able to kill as many people as he did. If we agree that psychopaths will kill whether or not they have access to guns, let us also acknowledge that if Cho would have been forced (by reasonable gun laws) to exact his brutality with the use of a mere knife, he would never be able to create the carnage that Cho created.

But a more important issue here is the violence that we find in our society: the violence that we encourage, the violence that we tolerate, the violence that we have become numb to. Poetry professor Nikki Giovanni made some important statements when she commented on the creative writing work that Cho was giving to her during the semester that he was in her class at Virginia Tech. She told him that she was not going to accept or tolerate the vicious nature of his writing. Cho told her that she couldn't refuse to accept it, and she shot right back, "Oh yes I can." This is the type of stand that all of us have to take whe we see violence being encouraged and tolerated in our communities and schools.

As an attorney and an author, I have a great appreciation for our civil rights that are afforded to us by the Constitution, but we cannot misinterpret that as suggesting that hate speech (and what could have been more hateful than the writings--and recorded video--of Cho Seung-Hui?) should be accepted and embraced. Too many music videos, computer games and films aimed at young people glorify violence, murder and assaults on individuals. Violence has become so much a part of our culture that many of us forget that young people who are raised with it are also slow to recognize its impact on the human psyche. Violence is now seen as entertainment. A murder or a shooting is no longer the "money shot" at a crucial moment of a film or a video game; it is now the ongoing backdrop to the rest of the show or game. In these films, killers are no longer the bad guys who get punished; they are often the heroes who win applause from the viewers.

My wife and I do not allow our children to watch films or to play videos that permit the killing or maiming of people. This may make us appear to be pollyannas to some, but we want our children to be sensitized to the violence in our society so that they can recognize it in themselves and in others when it rears its head. Right now, the parents and family members of Cho Seung-Hui are strangely silent, so we don't really know if his was a childhood that embraced a culture of violence. But if we continue to surround our children with images of violence, we will create young adults who see it as an inevitable future for themselves.

My Political Commentary on TV this weekend

For those fellow New Yorkers who are interested in my comments regarding the New York State budget that was just passed by the State Legislature and our exciting new Governor, Eliot Spitzer, I hope that you will watch my half-hour TV appearance on "Newsmakers", which airs on News 12. Airing on both Saturday and Sunday, I am conversing with hosts Janine Rose and Brian Conybeare, and debating with Republican strategist Michael Edelman.

Governor Spitzer, who was elected in a landslide victory following an extremely successful term as New York State Attorney General, has seen his first budget pass on schedule. Known as the "sheriff of Wall Street" following his policing of the financial industry and other segments of the business world, Spitzer is attempting to curb waste in governmental spending, as well as addressing the need for greater ethics in Albany. Key issues in our News 12 discussion include rising property taxes, increased school aid, Medicaid expenses, and the ongoing struggle between a Republican State Senate and a Democratic State Assembly.

We also discuss the Presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.

Washington Post story re: my book and D.C. Mayor Fenty

Many of you read the Washington Post article last week about my book, The Senator and the Socialite, and its significance for D.C.'s new Mayor, Adrian Fenty. Post op-ed columnist Colbert I. King quotes from my book and eloquently argues that Mayor Fenty should consider one of the the important lessons that I report: It was a lesson that was experienced by Washington's first black superintendent of schools in the early 1900s. As my book described, the highly celebrated black Washington superintendent Roscoe Bruce lost the support of influential black Washingtonians--and eventually his job in 1921--when he decided that the opinions of black residents, educators and intellectual leaders did not matter. Roscoe Bruce was not only a phi beta kappa graduate of Harvard's class of 1902, an honors graduate of Phillips Exeter and a friend of Booker T. Washington, but he was also the son of U.S. Senator Blanche Bruce, the first black to serve a full-term in the U.S. Senate. None of these credentials saved him when black Washingtonians discovered that here was a black leader who had turned his back on the very residents who had put him in power.

Washington Post columnist King uses his March 24 article "A History Lesson for Mayor Fenty" to argue that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty should realize that Washington's elite are paying attention to the appointments that he is making and the opinions that he is seeking. Columnist King suggests that Fenty could find himself in the same predicament as the once well-regarded Roscoe Bruce if he is not thoughtful and respectful to the constituents who elected him to the position of Washington, D.C. Mayor.